TWO SISTERS
JOHN D. GRAHAM, 1944
Ok so, the painter here isn't who he says he is. Or maybe he is. John D. Graham was born Ivan Dombrowsky, in Kiev. And the life story he told New York goes like this: aristocratic family, law degree, cavalry officer for the czar, medal for valor, prison under the Bolsheviks, escape through Crimea, boat to America. Great story. One catch. A lot of it comes from Graham. People checked what they could. Some of it held up. The rest, who knows. He liked it that way. Either way, the Russian officer, real or improved, becomes a painter in New York. And not just a painter. One of the best-connected men in American art. In 1942, he puts together a show and hangs two not-yet-famous painters, Pollock and de Kooning, on the same walls as Picasso, Braque, and Matisse. Two guys from the New York scene, seated at the grown-ups' table. And Graham saying: trust me. He was right. Now, the sisters. Two women, side by side, done up like an old master portrait. Jewels. Formal poses. One of them holding a pigeon. Nobody explains the pigeon. But the eyes. Look at the eyes. Both women, crossed. And that's no accident. The women in Graham's paintings are cross-eyed all over the place. Fairfield Porter, a painter who knew him, said Graham explained it this way: it gave life to the face. And the strange part is, it works. Straight eyes would just sit there. Crossed, they're looking at something. Just nothing in this room. Because while the artists Graham championed charged into abstraction, Graham turned and walked backwards. Icons. Masks. Old masters. He figured a face doesn't need realism to have power. Strip it down, and it gets heavier. Pollock becomes Pollock. De Kooning becomes de Kooning. And Graham? Graham becomes the guy in the footnote. So. Two sisters. One face, twice. Eyes pointed somewhere you can't follow. Painted by a man who may have invented himself, then slipped into the footnotes of the people he helped make famous.